Joss Garman writing in The Observer.
For the millennial generation the patronising cliches fall apart, because this isn\’t about ideals so much as hard science and the terrifying reality that what the scientists have been warning us all about for years – those sea level rises, catastrophic droughts and melting ice caps – will now happen in our lifetimes.
The Observer, on the same day, writing about sea level rises.
This point was backed by Dr Jason Lowe of the Hadley Centre, the UK\’s foremost climate change research centre. "It is still not clear exactly how much the sea will rise by the end of this century, but it is certain that rises will continue for hundreds of years beyond that – even if we do manage to stabilise carbon dioxide emissions and halt the rise in atmospheric temperature. The sea will continue to heat up and expand. In addition, the Greenland ice sheets will continue to melt," he said.
This latter effect could, ultimately, have a particularly destructive impact. Scientists have calculated that if industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases eventually produce a global temperature increase of around 4C, there is a risk that Greenland\’s ice covering could melt completely. This could take several hundred years or it might require a couple of thousand. The end result is not in doubt, however. It would add around seven metres to the planet\’s sea levels. The consequence would be utter devastation.
So is it a few hundred years or a few thousand years you\’re planning to live for then Joss?
They make it up as they go along.
Just keep repeating: “The science is settled, The science is settled,…” and ignore those pesky organizations disparately back-pedaling.
“This could take several hundred years or it might require a couple of thousand.” So, a simple heat transfer calculation gives an answer that’s accurate only to within an order of magnitude. And yet they can model something as complex as the atmosphere with enough certainty to justify spending gazillions of pounds. Odd, that.
The image illustrating the Observer article is of Dutch people skating on a frozen canal.
Pesky global warming.
Which, if you listen to the Met Office is very real. Their prediction for this year’s ‘global’ mean temperature is for it to be nearly half a degree C above the long term average. Leaving aside the questionable quality of temperature data, the long term average is defined as the average from 1961-1990. What about the last 18 years?
The little bit at the bottom of the Observer article neglects to mention two things:
Increased temperatures increases evapouration.(Which increases snowfall at the poles which makes the ice caps thicker)
For Antarctica to melt completely you’d have to raise the temperature there by an enormous amount.
See how they slip in CO2 and OTHER greenhouse gases. Thats because they know that CO2 on its own would have to increase 8x its current value to give a 4deg temp rise. Nobody in their right mind is forecasting that increase.
They never us what thos other gases are and what is causing them to increase.
What a smug, preening, holier-than-thou wanker this Garman tit must be. Upper crusties make me sick to my stomach. Note the grubby little martinet writes: “Lily Kember is 21 years old. Late last year, with 50 other activists, she shut down Stansted airport, in the process preventing thousands of tonnes of CO2 being released into the atmosphere,” rather than: “Lily Kember is an arrogant, supercilious little bitch. Last year, with a coterie of like-minded eco-fascists, she shut down Stansted airport, in the process disrupting the travel plans of thousands of people less privileged than she, who had saved all year for their holiday.”
Read Michael Macarthy in the Indie. It is, in fact, only “years”.
Strange, how it never occurs to editors that the production of a newspaper must be the most appalling act of eco-terrorism there is, raising global warming by about 100C – oh sorry, no, that’s my blood they’re boiling.